On the morning of 23 May 1874, Marie Peyrière climbed to the silkworm nursery at Pommiers to ensure the braziers were properly tended. There she came upon her father-in-law, François Barral, armed with a heavy cudgel. According to the indictment, not a word preceded the blow he struck her as she began her descent down the stairs. The young woman fell; the man seized her, dragged her into the ground-floor room where her husband and mother-in-law were assembled, and then—still according to the prosecution’s narrative—slipped the cord of his whip about her neck. Yet the scene that was to bring three members of a single family before the Gard Court of Assizes did not originate upon that staircase. It had been brewing within a household that, throughout an entire year, had found neither separate lodgings nor lasting peace.
The elder Barrals had permitted their son François to remain beneath their roof following his marriage. In April 1873, he had wed Marie Peyrière, and the young bride had moved into her parents-in-law’s home at Pommiers. The bill of indictment soon depicts a rift opening between her and her new kin. It relates that she reproached her father-in-law for having deposited half her dowry—some 750 francs—in the savings bank under his own wife’s name. The Barrals, for their part, charged her with a fractious disposition, complaining that they failed to find in her the submissiveness they expected of their own children. Such are the prosecution’s terms; we possess neither the household ledgers nor the words exchanged beyond what was reported at trial.
The husband, according to the same instrument, remained entirely subservient to his father’s authority. He made no effort to direct his wife, nor did he defend her. This posture lends the judicial narrative a peculiar gravity: Marie lived surrounded by those with whom she was at variance, while the man from whom she might have expected protection remained, by the prosecution’s account, ranged alongside his parents. The phrasing of the gazette compresses these roles into a few brief strokes; the facts it subsequently sets forth depict rather a sequence of domestic quarrels, removals, and abortive plans for separation that never came to fruition.
In January 1874, Marie took refuge with her father at Rogner. Her husband did not come to fetch her. He even wrote to the elder Peyrière, telling him to keep his daughter. Friendly counsel nonetheless induced her to return to the conjugal hearth in April, but this return put no end to the discord. The elder Barral insisted she inhabit a house belonging to him in a secluded hamlet several leagues from his residence. Marie consented upon a single condition: that her husband accompany her. This he refused to do. The mayor’s intervention led to a provisional arrangement: once the silk harvest was gathered, an independent apartment was to be fitted out for the young couple within the Barral dwelling.
That harvest had first to be awaited. Marie’s presence at Pommiers remained necessary for several weeks, and she asked leave to visit her father prior to this period of heavy labour. Her husband opposed it. She departed nonetheless for Rogner on 17 May, returning the following morning to resume her work. The Barrals greeted her, the gazette notes, with an affected silence. The newspaper account does not treat this departure as an irrevocable flight; it portrays rather a woman returning briefly to her own kin before resuming her place in a house where grievances had by no means cooled.
An apparently trifling incident rekindled them. The mother-in-law refused Marie the sugar needed for two cups of herbal tea; the young woman went to request some of a neighbour. This errand provoked an altercation during which the elder Barral reportedly threatened his daughter-in-law. The gazette links this altercation directly to the drama of 23 May; yet the interval was brief, and we cannot ascribe to it any meaning beyond that assigned by the press report and the indictment.
On the morning of the assault, Marie duly went up to the nursery. She found her father-in-law there, armed with a cudgel. As she was descending the stairs, without a word being spoken, he dealt her a blow to the head sufficiently violent to throw her down and send her rolling down the steps. He then dragged her into the ground-floor living quarters beneath the nursery. His son and wife were present. Bleeding and battered, Marie threw her arms about her husband’s neck, seeking a refuge in him. The prosecution charged him with having thrust her back into his father’s arms.
The elder Barral is then said to have seized the young woman and looped the cord of his whip about her neck. He attempted to strangle her; Marie, according to the deposition recorded in the indictment, instinctively slipped a hand between the cord and her throat. She heard her mother-in-law say: “We are doing what we have never done before.” These words were reported as those of a bystander to the scene; they do not suffice, of themselves, to establish what each accused had concerted beforehand. It fell to the jury to distinguish between witnessed acts, alleged intentions, and established complicity.
At Marie’s outcries, a sister-in-law hastened to the room. Beholding the victim bloodied and prostrate, she cried out: “Wretched father! What are you doing? To beat her is one thing, but to kill her!” She was thereupon seized with a fit of hysterics. The assailants dragged her toward a bedchamber and locked the room in which Marie lay. Marie, unable to flee, feigned death to avert further blows. Upon their return, her assailants turned her over repeatedly, as though to satisfy themselves that she showed no further sign of life. One of them seized her by the hair, dragged her to the nursery stairs, and let her head strike heavily against the stone.
The sequence that follows in the gazette’s account is colder still. Believing her dead, they washed her face to remove the stains of blood. After consulting among themselves, they summoned the neighbours; the elder Barral told them she had stunned herself in a fall down the stairs. The entire ordeal was reported to have lasted between three-quarters of an hour and an hour. The neighbours ministered to her, and Marie regained consciousness. She related what had transpired. The report states that Marie Peyrière remained bedridden for a month; at an examination conducted forty-eight days after the assault, she was still suffering from severe nervous shock. The account dwells upon this medical finding, which affords a measure of the duration of her injuries, without converting the examination into direct testimony of all the antecedent facts.
The indictment charged all three members of the family with attempted premeditated murder, committed with mutual assistance. It reported that the son had been seen shortly before the crime pacing before the house with a troubled air, which the prosecution likened to that of a lookout. He was then said, according to the same instrument, to have thrust his wife back into his father’s arms. The mother was alleged to have witnessed the scene and encouraged the violence; the father, for his part, had acknowledged a substantial portion of the acts alleged against him and, according to the indictment, confessed his intent to kill his daughter-in-law. These assertions formed the prosecution’s theory; they must not be confounded with the verdict that ultimately evaluated them.
Before the court, Marie Peyrière, still infirm, repeated the deposition she had given during the preliminary investigation. The presiding judge announced that, with respect to the father and son, he would put a question regarding intentional assault and battery resulting in an incapacity for labour exceeding twenty days. The distinction was of capital importance: the jury was not called upon merely to answer the narrative of a premeditated attempt as framed by the indictment, but also the issues of violence and degrees of participation revealed by the trial proceedings.
The jury acquitted the elder Madame Barral. They dismissed premeditation, but found the father guilty of attempted murder and assault and battery; against the son, they returned a verdict solely of complicity in assault and battery. Extenuating circumstances were granted. The father was sentenced to six years of solitary confinement with hard labour; the son, to two years’ imprisonment. Thus the court did not endorse en bloc the sweeping accusations that opened the narrative. It apportioned the three responsibilities, distinguishing the attempted murder from the acts of violence in which the son was adjudged a confederate.
Such was the judicial denouement of the drama at Pommiers. In the household, the plans for separate lodgings had been deferred until after the harvest; at the assizes, that same family was sundered by the jury’s answers. It would be simple to adopt the vehement language of the court report and mistake an indictment for established fact. It is wiser to assign each element its proper weight: the threats are reported, the blows are recounted by the victim and the indictment, the intents are alleged and then partially admitted, and finally the verdict and sentences determine what the jurors truly retained. The young woman escaped with her life, yet justice pronounced no indiscriminate blanket condemnation. The father was punished for the attempt and the injuries; the son for the assault alone; the mother walked forth an acquitted woman. In that very distinction lies the true conclusion of the case.